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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24427228">Harmony</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth'>DameRuth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bliss [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Multi, Pre-OT3, Pre-Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:33:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,681</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24427228</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Bliss!verse missing moment, short prequel to "Link."  Sometimes, something as simple as a thread of melody can hold tremendous meaning.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bliss [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/14078</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Harmony</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set immediately before the opening of "Boom Town."</p><hr/><p>I'm continuing to migrate over my Teaspoon content - originally posted 2007.08.29.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Doctor strode briskly through the corridors of the TARDIS, taking the twists and turns without thought, the mazelike patterns as familiar as his own skin and bones.  The headlamp swung casually by its band, which was looped over the Doctor’s forefinger.  He’d had a devil of a time remembering where he’d used it last — he hoped the Captain hadn’t gotten too impatient, waiting for him in the control room.  They planned on getting in a touch of maintenance work while their ship sat neatly parked on the Cardiff Rift, soaking up temporal fuel.<br/>
<br/>
The Doctor rattled his way up the metallic helix of a spiral stairway and swung around the center pole for extra momentum as he launched himself down the corridor, not quite jogging, but still making good use of this incarnation’s long, rangy legs.  He’d reached the more commonly-used rooms, now — the galley, the aft storeroom, Rose’s bedroom . . .<br/>
<br/>
He could hear her as he approached.  Singing in the shower, as usual; the door to her room was slightly ajar, letting her voice (and a few tendrils of scented steam) out into the corridor.  It was a common enough thing that the Doctor didn’t pay much attention beyond a vague subliminal awareness.  His mind was racing ahead to conduits and access panels and wiring . . .<br/>
<br/>
Until he came even with Rose’s door, and recognized the line of melody she was singing.  It stopped him dead in his tracks.  Lips parted in surprise, his head swiveled to gaze at the thin slice of Rose’s room visible through the crack in the doorway and he simply stared and listened, riveted.<br/>
<br/>
Rose was singing the TARDIS’s song, wordlessly, with unselfconscious volume and freedom.  Her untrained voice wasn’t up to some of the high notes and trickier passages, but it was young, and strong, and sweet.  Coming from her throat, the music soared.<br/>
<br/>
The Doctor swallowed in shock.  The TARDIS didn’t share her music with many of those who traveled alongside him.  Susan had heard it, of course, and known it for what it was, as had Romana.<br/>
<br/>
Once Nyssa, idly picking out melodies of her homeworld on a dulcimer, had chanced upon a few phrases.<br/>
<br/>
Sarah Jane had hummed it to herself while running an absent fingertip along a Library shelf, cruising for a new book to read.<br/>
<br/>
Unexpectedly, Turlough had whistled a few bars while sketching an interesting rock formation one fine summer’s day.<br/>
<br/>
But nobody of non-Gallifreyan origin had heard the whole of the song.  Or so he’d thought.<br/>
<br/>
A glimmer of the faint, teasing empathic connection that had been subtly plaguing the current TARDIS crew of late sparked in his mind.  Through it he knew that Rose was singing her heart out (thinking the music to be her own) because she was looking forward to seeing her sometime-boyfriend Mickey-the-Idiot again.<br/>
<br/>
Empathy was not telepathy, and didn’t provide words or images, but the clear light of Rose’s emotions left little doubt as to the direction her mind was going.  It was all <i>too</i> strong, too bright -- the link that was trying to form was rising up close to the surface, a whisper away from becoming real and inevitable . . . but he didn’t want to think about that.  So he shunted the knowledge away, and just listened.<br/>
<br/>
As Rose became more absorbed in her thoughts, paying even less attention to what her throat was doing, her pitch steadied, and the song became truer, nearly perfect.  One especially heartbreaking glissando passage made the Doctor’s eyes close in sympathetic, bittersweet appreciation.  A song of Gallifrey, in the unlikeliest of places.  The beauty of it cut and soothed at the same time.<br/>
<br/>
Rose, still unaware of what was moving just beneath her conscious thoughts, felt his emotions through their  near-connection.  Even though her thoughts were on her human lover, her heart resonated with the Doctor’s, and the song shifted.  It warmed with affection, sliding into closer harmony with the threads of TARDIS-song that eternally filled the back of the Doctor’s own mind.<br/>
<br/>
He shuddered, every inch of his skin suddenly alive and tingling.  Almost, he could feel individual droplets of cascading water, soap bubbles sliding over clean, silky skin . . .<br/>
<br/>
Suddenly afraid, his immobility exploded into desperate motion, and he bolted down the corridor towards the control room — but now he was hurrying away from Rose, rather than hurrying toward his original destination.  His brain was a desperate whirl, full of fear, worry and foreboding.  He didn’t know how much longer this could last.  To lose Rose would be to lose one of his hearts, but the alternative . . .<br/>
<br/>
With the mental strength developed by burying memories of the War, the Doctor wrenched his thoughts back onto the track of conduits and access panels, and the maintenance work he would be doing with Jack, any moment now.<br/>
<br/>
By the time he strode into the control room he was centered again, thinking about what was immediately in front of him, everything else shoved away into dark corners where he could ignore it, mostly.  He opened his mouth and drew breath to let Jack know he’d finally gotten back with the blasted headlamp — but he never spoke the words.<br/>
<br/>
Jack had his back to the Doctor, and was still unaware of his presence.  The Captain was running an idle hand along the edge of the control panel, gently tweaking a few dials, flicking invisible bits of dust from readout screens.  The TARDIS liked Jack; as finicky and skittish as she was, she suffered him touching her and working on her.  She almost never gave him one of the grumpy little electric shocks she was always doling out to the Doctor, either.  In return, Jack treated the timeship with obvious affection.  More often than not, when he was absorbed in working on her, he would hum to himself, under his breath, an absentminded expression of pleasure.<br/>
<br/>
He was humming now, loudly enough for the Doctor to hear.  It was the same haunting, lilting melody Rose was singing in her shower.<br/>
<br/>
The Doctor froze again, breath caught in his throat.<br/>
<br/>
Unlike Rose’s, Jack’s voice was smooth and controlled.  The Time Patrol made sure their people had every possible advantage, and the Doctor could often detect that training in the undercurrents of Jack’s vocal intonation and projection.  It hardly amounted to thought control, but the Captain did have a rudimentary understanding of using vocal pitch to influence others — though he’d long since discarded any such tricks in Rose and the Doctor’s presence.<br/>
<br/>
Nor was Jack using any of those tricks now — he was simply humming for the pleasure of it, anticipating a session of enjoyable tinkering, followed by a chance to get out and explore Rose’s native time and space (about which Jack was mightily curious).<br/>
<br/>
The TARDIS’s music suited his voice admirably, and the practiced vibrato Jack worked into the sustained notes even provided an eerie echo of the split tones in the actual melody.<br/>
<br/>
The Doctor knew without a doubt then that things as they had been were close to an end, and the breath huffed out of him in silent pain.<br/>
<br/>
Jack reached one of the long, soaring, celebratory passages in the melody — as heartbreakingly beautiful from his throat as from Rose’s.  The Doctor felt a sharp, hard twinge of grief in his chest, right between the hearts.<br/>
<br/>
Jack, sensing something he couldn’t identify, jumped.  The music faltered and stopped, and he looked over his shoulder, startled.  For just a moment, his face was unguarded, his blue eyes wide and vulnerable.  It was not a common expression for the cynical Captain and it didn’t last long, but it was telling — when a perpetually wary man relaxes enough to be surprised, it’s only because he trusts his surroundings, and the people with him.  Completely.<br/>
<br/>
The Doctor knew then he was doomed.  If losing Rose would take away one of his hearts, losing Jack would remove the other.  What would be left?<br/>
<br/>
Jack’s expression shaded quickly through dismay and embarrassment, then slid sideways into cynical amusement as he recovered.  He gave the Doctor a lopsided grin.<br/>
<br/>
“Don’t sneak up on me like that, Doctor,” he said, mock-chiding.  “Scare a fella with only one heart bad enough and . . . well, the results aren’t good.”  He pushed away from the console, and turned so he could rest one hip against it.  “That the doodad you were looking for?” he continued, gesturing towards the headlamp still dangling from the Doctors hand.<br/>
<br/>
“Yep.  Took longer to find than I thought.’  The Doctor’s reflexes kicked in somehow, and he was moving again, his body walking and talking, seeming perfectly normal, even while at least half his brain was still in shock.<br/>
<br/>
He held up the headlamp, displaying his trophy, then slipped it onto his head, and flicked the switch to light it.<br/>
<br/>
Jack laughed, grinning broadly, and shook his head at the effect.<br/>
<br/>
“’Doodad,’” the Doctor continued, his self-willed, self-animating voice not missing a beat.  “That the kinda’ technical terminology they teach in the Time Patrol?”<br/>
<br/>
“Hey, we don’t all get our advanced degrees in the fine art of jiggery-pokery,” Jack shot back, voice desert-dry.  “So what’s our game plan for today?”<br/>
<br/>
The Doctor began outlining his technical plans at high speed, knowing Jack could and would follow right along.  As the work at hand filled his mind, his worries about the future faded, relegated back to the dark corners.  It would all have to be dealt with soon, but not now.  Not just yet.<br/>
<br/>
By the time Rose finished preening and primping, the Doctor felt almost normal --- enough so to be joking back and forth with the others at high speed while they waited for Rickey (or Mickey) the Idiot to arrive.<br/>
<br/>
It was the first time the Doctor had ever been happy to see the bloke.<br/>
</p>
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</p><p><span class="u">Disclaimer:</span>  All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners.  The original characters and plot are the property of the author.  No money is being made from this work.  No copyright infringement is intended.<br/>
<br/>
This story archived at <a href="http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=15059">http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=15059</a></p><p>
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